Social media has become a tool that recruiters must use these days. It allows you to get an incredible amount of information, which is why it is considered a must-use source. Social media can make the life of a recruiter much easier, but, on the other side, it also comes with its drawbacks. While there is an extensive list of things to love with social recruiting, there are also rules and regulations to follow. The goal of this article is to discuss all those things. We will try to see how you can make the maximum use of social media while making sure to follow all regulations and avoid all traps that can lead to trouble. Let’s start with the positive stuff.
Advantages of Using Social Recruiting
The most important advantage of social recruiting is that it provides the recruiters unrestricted access into the lives of prospective candidates. If you are looking to hire a potential applicant, it’s only natural to go through his social media profiles and get useful insights into his/her life. It can help you determine whether the candidate is applying for the job position or not. The job of gathering information is made much easier by the various scraping tools available. These include Entelo, Prophet, Rapportive, and 360social. Although these are the four tools we recommend, you can also search for other available software that allows you to pull all the information from the applicant’s online social profiles through just a single click.
Social media profile pages have indeed become a presentation of your personal brand. Aside from being a powerful tool to provide an insight into a candidate’s brand, recruiters can also use it to build a brand of their own. By establishing a recognizable brand on social media, you will be able to attract much better talents.
Another advantage of social recruiting is that it makes establishing and cultivating a relationship with prospective candidates easier. If you’re looking for ways to get a competitive advantage by offering a great candidate experience, social media might be just the tool you need.
Disadvantages of Using Social Recruiting
Experts advise great caution if using prospective candidates’ social profile pages during the screening process. The reason is that recruiters may open their company to a lawsuit when looking at photos or reading potential applicants’ posts. When you check out their Facebook or LinkedIn profile pages, you may indirectly make assertions into the race, national origin, age, sexual orientations, and other things subjected to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This is why it is extremely important to properly navigate when sourcing odd social media. It might be the favorite channel for recruitment, but there are misdoings you can commit that can lead to potential lawsuits. They are the reason why some companies have abandoned using social media in their screening process.
The Importance of Social Media
Even if we put all the good and bad things aside, it is important to be present on social media in order to stay relevant across different recruiting platforms. Prospective candidates use social media to find information about job openings. They may use Twitter to send you questions about organizational culture. They want to be able to talk to recruiters at the click of a button.
Social media is a great way to cultivate a relationship with the candidate. On social media platforms, you can always be online and prospective candidates can drop you a message at 11 p.m. or 5 am. It is vital to answer all the messages you get in order to form a relationship. After all, you’d want to start on the right foot as he/she might be a future employee of your company.
Social recruiting used to be an important competitive advantage. Today, it is somewhat of a burden as all companies and recruiters need to use it. It’s not easy to become an excellent social recruiter. You will need to learn a proper way to check out a candidate’s profile in order to make the right decision on whether the potential employee is an appropriate fit for your company.
The necessity to be active and (almost) always online is why many recruiters don’t like social media. These platforms offer access to an incredibly extensive pool of talents and provide valuable information about prospective candidates. On the other hand, it comes with the cost of getting numerous messages from inadequate candidates, and even some inappropriate messages, such as the ones from applicants that didn’t get a particular job.
Another important thing to know about social media is that you can’t ignore a candidate. Each message you don’t answer and each answer you give influence candidate experience. Leaving a good impression with the prospective applicant is extremely important for you and your company’s reputation.
Recruiters that want to excel at their job must use social media nowadays. While online social platforms provide a lot of advantages, they also require great effort and caution because they can easily damage your reputation.
